Nathan Chen

to meet you

nathan

and congratulations thank you thank you for having me I want to talk a little bit about growing up you grew up in Salt Lake City your family wasn't rich skating is notoriously an expensive sport to train in you hit the ice first on your my sister's used skates They talk about the sacrifices your family made for you. My family did a lot for me. And really, everything I've been able to achieve in skating is largely due to them and all the work and sacrifice they made. They did for me, like you said, I had my sisters pass me skates for my first pair of skates and then I was able to have, by the gentle hand of Michael Weiss, a pair of my own skates as I got a little older. and as I continued to progress in skating, I decided to move to California and from there it was hard to finance skating and it was hard to just pay for the flights and the hotels and all that, a lot of times, not a lot of times, every time my mom would take me away. return. and from california or from utah to california and we slept in a car and even just paid my coaches and all that, they always found ways to reduce the funds or take me more time than the funds would allow, um or even give me the money back later of my mom paying me, but yeah, the people I worked with on my team did a lot to help me get to where I am now and it's really because of them, they would say it was a good investment.

I bet Nathan your mom is a Chinese immigrant and she took you to Beijing when you were little. What was it like going there as an Olympian? It was incredible. I went when I was about 10 and I actually had a um. There was a show there at the time so we were able to go there and I saw my extended family my grandparents and the rest of my family that's still in China so it was really cool to be able to see them at that time um and then. This time, some of the things I visited.

For example, I saw the Beijing Zoo when I was 10 years old and every day on that trip between the Olympic Village and the track, we passed the Beijing Zoo. It was really cool to be able to have that connection and always be able to remember that I was here with my family many years ago and now I'm back here, about 12 years later, competing in the Olympics. It's really cool, you know. The team also won a silver in Beijing, but unfortunately a Russian skater tested positive for a banned substance and the IOC made a controversial decision to suspend podium ceremonies in any of the events in which she placed in the top three, so that you had to return home without a podium ceremony for your team's silver victory and you were sent home with an empty box, that's true, that's true, I don't think the intention was just to provide us with the empty boxes, but we they provided them before the decision was made and at that time we got the empty boxes and then we went to meet the rest of our teammates wearing all of our metal ceremony kit and then they said, oh this is not happening, come back and change and we had I had no idea what was going on and I fast forwarded to the Olympics, you know, getting more information and understanding what was going on.

We were trying to push to have a ceremony and have something like that to celebrate the work that we did. We feel like we deserved it. as a team and now we're still waiting for decisions, we're still waiting for some kind of resolution and we're not there yet so fingers crossed it happens soon but I know the rest of my team. and I are waiting for our medals. I want to talk about the 2018 Olympics in South Korea. There were high expectations placed on you and you ended up falling during the short program, so in the long program you just took a chance and didn't do it. just the five quadruple jumps from the plan that you added, just in case, a sixth that took you from 17 to 5, but you still weren't in a mental position like people expected, talk about that experience, what did you learn from that experience?

I definitely thought I learned more from you. I think overall throughout my career I've learned more from my mistakes and in this situation that was certainly the case. I think you know, like you said, there were a lot of expectations. about me from other people, but also internally and I think being able to have that experience and learn from that experience and then realize all the pieces that I was missing training up to that competition, as well as adapting to the competition and that kind of experience gave me It helped a lot over the next four years, from 2018 to 2022, and finally helped me get to a position where I could actually enjoy gaming in 2022 and do the best I could without worrying about all the things I couldn't control.

Many elite athletes, Nathan, are now being very honest about their own mental health issues and the stress they face when competing at that level. First of all, he has worked with the sports psychologist. You think about these other athletes talking about it and what you learned from the person you worked with. I think it's amazing that all of these athletes are coming out and telling their stories and just normalizing it so much that the rest of the athletes are starting to take responsibility for thinking and understanding what they're currently going through. I think a lot of times, you know, we were previously expected not to consider how we feel mentally and how we feel internally.

It's all just about physical health, but to perform well we have to be physically well and that includes mental health, so I think it's a really amazing thing to talk about and I'm glad people are still talking about it. About these things in the last few years I started working with a mental health coach and also more in the sense of just mentally preparing myself for a competition and making sure that I can focus on what I need to be able to perform to my For me, uh, you know, essentially the best potential, um, and I think the biggest thing that stuck with me is just being able to realize that our thoughts can create our actions, um, and so when we're, when we're stressed, when we're nervous. um and we keep thinking about how stressed and nervous we are, often that leads to acting out and we act stressed and nervous, whereas if we can turn on ourselves and recognize, you know I'm stressed and nervous right now, but we go. change your thoughts and think very positively think very openly and try to know how to think about all the things that you are good at and all the things that give you confidence, your body naturally follows those thoughts and you are able to act in a similar line, so I thought it was really shocking and something I still do to this day you're a student at Yale is it true that you want to be a doctor?

I would like to um that's certainly part of my exploration over the next two years and, you know, I'm looking forward to coming back to Yale and in August and continuing my studies and then when will we see you on the ice again right now? ? Actually, I'm in the stars now. in ice sports, so I'll be on the ice with the rest of my US athlete team for the next two months and then from there, you know, I'll switch gears to more studying and, you know , decide what the rest of my figure will be. The skating race has gold and silver medalist Nathan Chen for me.

It has been a pleasure. Thank you very much for being here. Absolutely thank you for having me.